'Clarkson’s caravan collapsed and the toilet fell out'

Michael Hogan reviews the fifth episode of the 20th series of Top Gear.

A dominant Lewis Hamilton won his first Grand Prix for Mercedes and a fine day for petrolheads was rounded off by a typically entertaining episode of Top Gear (BBC Two) – although it took the climactic stunt sequence to add a star onto that rating you see above.

Build-up to this instalment was dominated by another row over faked scenes during last week’s home-made hovercraft sequence. Who’d have guessed that the diners cartoonishly shaking their fists were hired actors and not conveniently placed, highly telegenic members of the public? This show falls under Entertainment, not Factual, so fans hardly expect documentary veracity. Ratings were duly unaffected and if anything boosted – this show pulled in an impressive 4.6m, making it the second most-watched programme of the day.

This week's proceedings opened with James May and the Porsche 911 – both design classics born in 1963. Only one of them, however, was wearing a dodgy jumper which looked like TV interference. The knitwear was also a clue that this rather pedestrian section was filmed some months ago and couldn’t be squeezed into the last series, so was recycled for this one.

Back in the studio, the three overgrown schoolboys had some innuendo fun with a riff on the David Cameron’s new pornography filter. Meanwhile, a bespectacled female audience member visible over Jeremy Clarkson’s shoulder incurred the wrath of Twitter by laughing too hard and too horse-ily.

Then it was Richard Hammond’s turn to squeal with adolescent excitement about some sports cars, as he drove the Lamborghini Aventador Roadster through some picturesque Italian countryside before screeching its stablemate, the limited edition Sesto Elemento, round the Imola race track. Forged from lightweight carbon fibre, this sci-fi hypercar carries an eye-watering £2m price tag and became only the second car to be spun off the track by tame racing driver The Stig.

The Star in a Reasonably Priced Car was rock pensioner, American Idol judge and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler – introduced by the leering Clarkson as “Liv Tyler’s dad”. He resembled a Botox-addled Elle Macpherson and if Tyler had crashed, his bee-stung lips could have acted as airbags. Unfortunately, he was going far too slow for that and duly clocked up the second slowest lap time ever. The likeable hedonist did, however, utter one memorable bon mot: “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

Top Gear certainly does that, especially with its bête noire: caravans. The much-maligned mobile homes have taken a terrible pounding over the years and tonight’s final feature inflicted further damage.

Clarkson and May tested the jacked-up diesel hatchbacks known as “crossovers”, increasingly popular amongst the caravanning community. Having established that they all looked the same, the amusing pair set out to discover which was the best – or, more accurately, “least worst”. They spent a day doing what they imagined caravanners do: going to the tip, B&Q and the garden centre, washing their cars, doing some birdwatching, indulging in dogging, going to the tip again.

The Stig gunned models by Mazda and Volkswagen round the test track, which resulted in a flipped caravan, a lost wheel and a shower of sparks.

Finally, Clarkson and May raced to a New Forest campsite and both decided to take an off-road route. Cue mud splatter, plentiful shots of furniture crashing about in the back, Clarkson’s caravan collapsing, a portable toilet flying out of its rear and detritus being left on someone’s lawn.

Both presenters got the infectious giggles and this proved a raucous climax to what, until then, had been a rather mediocre installment. And on that bombshell...